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What is the relationship between taxation and public safety? Contrary to studies suggesting that personal victimization and heightened perceptions of insecurity increase pro-social attitudes and support for state intervention in the form of greater taxation, this article argues that such concerns decrease willingness to pay taxes to address public safety. It estimates what citizens are willing to pay to reduce crime, using an original representative survey conducted in Mexico and relying on the contingent valuation method to assess the value of nonmarket goods. Attitudes toward taxation are found to respond to subjective, sociotropic assessments of public safety rather than to actual risk or occurrences of individual victimization. These findings counter the conventional wisdom that demand for personal security enables greater extraction, a central proposition in classic accounts of state building. Showing that willingness to accept heavier taxation may be weakest among those who perceive the gravest need for security, the study adds precision to theories of fiscal exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the recent economic recession Ireland had become one of the most affluent societies in the world, and the so-called Irish social model of low taxes and low public services provision was seen as one to be emulated, particularly amongst the accession states to the EU. However, Ireland has also become one of the most unequal societies in the OECD, and one of the unhealthiest, measured by all of the standard morbidity and epidemiological indicators, and the social gradient of health corresponds closely with social inequality. Ireland's healthcare system, always relatively underdeveloped in comparison to most European countries, reflects social inequality; it is a two-tiered system wherein a minority with private health insurance enjoy access to good care and facilities, while the rest make do with an underdeveloped, under-resourced and overstretched public health system and subsidise the private services. The Irish social model is schizmogenic, generating and amplifying social inequalities. This is clearly visible in the domain of health, which has become a crucible of public de-legitimation and political foment. Ireland's problems are problems for the health and well-being of the European body politic, insofar as other members emulate the Irish model, cutting corporate taxes and reducing public services in a race to the bottom away from the Rhinish and Nordic social models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In democratic countries tax systems are complex and elaborated. The issue of tax complexity is a crucial one in the policy debate about tax design and reforms. A recent trend towards simplification has emerged, at least in developed countries. We argue that tax complexity is the result of the interplay between economic and political factors, and we assess the observed trends and the main features of tax complexity under this perspective. Italy represents an interesting case: changes in the structure of the personal income tax in the period 1974-2005 are meant to reduce tax complexity. Data on the Italian personal income tax suggest the existence of a trade-off in the determination of tax complexity: on one side more complexity is beneficial for a heterogeneous population, since it allows a design closer to individuals' preferences, while on the other side it is costly. We explore the emergence of this trade-off in a voting model. Median voter models are not able to appropriately capture the multidimensional nature of the determination of tax complexity. A simple probabilistic voting model instead delivers interesting results. We find that, when grouping individuals with different income levels in the same income bracket, on one side the political support by individuals, who necessarily will pay a tax rate different from their preferred one, is reduced, while on the other side the administrative cost of taxation is also reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 2005 Presidential Advisory Panel on Tax Reform proposed a family credit and a work credit to replace some current tax credits, deductions, and exemptions. Taxes are overlooked by many social workers as a policy instrument for increasing the disposable income of low- and moderate-income families. This paper analyzes the proposed new credits through a justice framework. Social justice often is defined as the equitable distribution of societal resources. This definition reflects one type of justice--Rawls's egalitarian philosophy. A more nuanced understanding of justice may enable coalition building in policy making, leading to the enactment of tax policy that helps families pay for their basic needs--a goal of both direct service and policy practice social work practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HOW STATE CONTEXT influences voter turnout across the United States may be understood in terms of the decision to vote as a function of the relative importance of state elections. Grounded in the second-order (subnational) elections idea, which frames the decision to vote in terms of whether or not voters perceive something major at stake in the election for an office or government, this study emphasizes the interplay between state fiscal policies and electoral consequences. Specifically, the central hypothesis is that in states in which expenditures or tax burdens are greater, the electoral stakes become higher, and people therefore are more likely to vote. This study not only advances a new rationale for voter turnout across the United States but also enhances our understanding of second-order elections more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors build on the work of Engelmann and Strobel and of Ackert, Martinez-Vazquez, and Rider to examine the potential role of social preferences in tax policy design. They randomly assign each participant in a session to a group with five members. The payoffs to participants are determined by majority vote of the participants in a given group. The authors randomly assign each participant a pretax income that remains the same throughout the experiment to control for the potential confounding effect of risk-pooling equilibria. On the basis of statistical analysis of the data generated by these experiments, they find support for the hypothesis that the minimax preferences of Rawis or the inequality aversion model of Fehr and Schmidt help explain individual choices over alternative tax structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]